


Into the Breach

by Swordsoul2000



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:27:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swordsoul2000/pseuds/Swordsoul2000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While in the Breach, Raleigh Becket made a choice, one he couldn't be sure his copilot would ever forgive him for. But it was the only one he could have made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Breach

**Author's Note:**

> Travis Beacham said on his Tumbler that the effects of the neural load from going solo start out small and build overtime. Also that you have to be hardwired into the motion rig to experience the Drift. With that in mind, I wanted to explore Raleigh's second solo outing.

Raleigh felt it first, like a slight tingling sensation at the back of his mind, only made obvious by the loud, resonating silence he felt on the other side of it. A _familiar_ tingle, one he knew that if left unchecked, would devolve into an all-encompassing burn, one that would ravage his entire being.

 

 _No_. Not Mako. Not again.

 

Only then did he hear Tendo's words over the comm, regain enough of himself to physically turn his head to glance over at his copilot for the first time since falling into the Breach. To read the dials that monitored her status. She was still alive. Still present in the Conn-Pod. Not like Yancy, torn away and out of his head, never to return. If he'd still been thinking rationally, he would have known that Slattern couldn't have done to Mako what Knifehead did to Yancy: at these depths, if the Conn-Pod had been breached, the immediate press of water would have instantly engulfed him, drowning him instantly despite his supplemental oxygen. As it was, Slattern's dying efforts to defend the Breach had still done serious damage. Mako's oxygen line had been cut, and with her smaller lung capacity, the deficiency had already been enough to cause her to lose consciousness.

 

He was moving almost before he realized what he had to do, disengaging from Gipsy's motion rig with a few quick jerks, the faint burn of the neural load dissipating as he cut the connection to Gipsy's mainframe. The Drift wasn't going to do any more good, Gipsy didn't need to fight anymore, all she needed to do was fall. Carefully he made his way to his copilot, bringing his oxygen line with him. Disconnecting the line from his armor, he plugged it into place on Mako's.

 

 _It's all right_ , he told her silently, as if they were still connected in the Drift. _All I have to do is fall_. _Anyone can fall_.

 

Seeing that Mako's oxygen stats were high enough, he hit the button to eject her from the Conn-Pod. She'd never forgive him for doing this to her, he knew, but he couldn't watch her die. And she was young, she still had a future waiting for her in the world above the waves. She was so smart, so brave, she didn't deserve to die here, down in the Breach, in a malfunctioning Conn-Pod, least of all to something so mundane as oxygen deprivation. Not like him, scarred and broken, and a failure at most everything he'd tried. But there was only one last task left for him to accomplish, and he couldn't fail at that. Not with so much at stake.

 

The self-destruct failed to engage. Malfunction. Slattern's final frenzy leaving one last consequence. But that was all right. There was still the manual override.

 

Raleigh had been down there only once before, just after he and Yancy had been assigned to Gipsy Danger. The techs had taken them around, showed them the careful path down through Gipsy's systems to her core. It had still been the Glory Days then, when humanity was winning the fight against the kaiju, but even then, the concept of manual self-destruct as the only option to take out a seemingly victorious kaiju had been factored in.

 

It wasn't easy reaching the core. The access space was narrow and cramped, nearly impassible in his armor. Raleigh didn't remember it being so cramped. But he made it through and down to the core itself, his progress impeded at times by the fluctuating gravity of the Breach. Or maybe they'd passed all the way through the Breach by now, and were now on the other side.

 

It didn't matter. He'd reached the core. Found it, and set the overload. The numbers blinked at him. One minute. The timer was programed to be short, to be set as a last ditch measure to stop the kaiju from advancing inland, so that it couldn't get away before it blew.

 

He didn't stick around after he'd set the countdown, swarming through the access point to the Conn-Pod despite the tight fit. He didn't think he was going to make it, but he owed it to Mako to try. To Mako, and to Yancy, because his brother would never let him forget it if the reason Raleigh had finally caught up to him after Anchorage was because he'd been too slow to get out of the way in time.

 

He couldn't see much out the viewscreen, Gipsy seemed to be falling on her back and he would have to hook himself into the Drift and access her sensors to look behind her. But he didn't need to see to know where they were. The ugly aperture above him had to be the other side of the Breach.

 

Mind blank, he stepped back into the motion harness, allowed the clamps and buckles to snap into place. Then he hit the button to eject. He felt the harness respond, bringing his body up into the rescue pod, had a moment to think, _at least that's working_ , before the pod jettisoned from Gipsy, leaving her behind.

 

He fancied he could feel the moment she blew. And then all was darkness.

 

He woke to Mako's arms wrapped tightly around his body, to the sea air and salt spray on his face, and water dripping onto his shoulder. “Don't go,” he heard her choke into his ear, her voice tight from her tears.

 

He wasn't going anywhere. Though if she didn't let him breathe, that might change. “You're squeezing me too hard,” Raleigh managed breathlessly.

 

Mako froze, her arms tightening for just an instant in her shock, before they loosened with a relieved giggle. Relief, adrenaline, too many emotions for either of them to name ping-ponging back and forth between them, as if the Drift were still active. They pulled back just enough to rest their foreheads together, unwilling to actually let go. The Breach was closed. The war was over.

 

They'd won.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow...that was fast. I came up with the idea, wrote this story, and posted it all in a single day. That's never happened before. Ever. Maybe the length, exactly 1,000 words, had something to do with how fast that was, but still....wow. 
> 
>  
> 
> Please review and let me know what you think? Please, pretty please?


End file.
